CARL JUNG, NEO-GNOSTICISM, & THE MBTI

A report by Rev. Ed Hird, Past National Chair of ARM Canada (revised
March 18/98)

In 1991, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Episcopal Renewal
Ministries(ERM) Leadership Training Institute (LTI) in Evergreen, Colorado.
Since then, I and others encouraged Anglican Renewal Ministries Canada
to endorse the LTI approach, reporting in the ARM Canada magazine with
articles about our helpful LTI experiences. ARM Canada, through our
LTI Director, Rev. Murray Henderson, has since run a number of very helpful
Clergy and Lay LTIs across Canada, which have been well received and appreciated.
Through listening to the tapes by Leanne Payne and Dr. Jeffrey Satinover
from the 1995 Kelowna Prayer Conference, I came across some new data
that challenged me to do some rethinking about the Jungian nature of the
MBTI (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator) used in the current ARM Canada
LTIs. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s critique of Jungianism came with unique
credibility, given his background as an eminent Jungian scholar, analyst,
and past President of the C.G. Jung Foundation. I began to do some
reading on Carl Jung, and mailed each ARM Board member a copy of the two
audio tapes by Payne and Satinover. The ARM Board at our April 1996
meeting took an initial look at the Jungian nature of the MBTI, and whether
we should continue to use the MBTI in our LTIs. Our ARM Board agreed
to do some investigating on this topic and report back with some information
to discuss at the November 1996 ARM Board meeting.

Currently approximately two and a half million people are ‘initiated’
each year into the MBTI process. (1) According to Peter B. Myers,
it is now the most extensively used personality instrument in history.
(2) There is even a MBTI version for children, called the MMTIC (Murphy-Meisgeier
Type Indicator for Children)(3), and a simplified adult MBTI-like tool
for the general public, known as the Keirsey-Bates Indicator. A most
helpful resource in analyzing the MBTI is the English Grove Booklet by
Rev. Robert Innes, of St. John’s College, Durham, entitled Personality
Indicators & the Spiritual Life. Innes focused on "the two indicators
most widely used by Christian groups - Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram."(4)
One of the key questions for the ARM Board to settle is whether the MBTI
is an integral part of Jungian neo-gnosticism, or alternately, that it
may be a detachable benevolent portion of Jung’s philosophy in an otherwise
suspect context. To use a visual picture, is the MBTI the ‘marijuana’,
the low-level entry drug that potentially opens the door to the more hard-core
Jungian involvement, or is it just a harmless sugar tablet? To get at this
question, I have broken my analysis down into smaller, more concrete questions.

1. Is the MBTI actually connected with Carl Jung?The Rev. Canon Charles Fulton, President of ERM, commented in a June
17th, 1996 letter that "We have certainly had some concerns over the MBTI
over the years and its Jungian nature". Rev. Fred Goodwin, Rector
of National Ministries for ERM, commented in a September 18th, 1996 letter
that "...we (ERM) no longer use the MBTI in our teachings...we’ve not included
it in the last couple of years - believing that there are many other models
and issues that need to be discussed with clergy and lay leaders."
In Isabel Briggs-Myers’ book Introduction To Type (1983), she comments
that the MBTI is "based on Jung’s theory of psychological types."(5)
In the book People Types and Tiger Stripes written by Jungian practitioner
Dr. Gordon Lawrence, he states that "The (MBTI) Indicator was developed
specifically to carry Carl Jung’s theory of type (Jung, 1921, 1971) into
practical application."(6) In the Grove Book on personality indicators,
Robert Innes comments that "Carl Jung’s psychology lies behind...the MBTI".(7)

The Buros Mental Measurement YearBook (1989, 10th Edition) notes that
the MBTI "...is a construct-oriented test that is inextricably linked with
Jung’s (1923) theory of psychological types."(8) As to the evidence
of validity, Buros characterizes the stability of type classification over
time as "somewhat disappointing."(9) The Jungian/MBTI stance, as
expressed by Dr. Gordon Lawrence, former President of the Association for
Psychological Types, is that MBTI "types are a fact", not a theory.(10)
After reviewing the statistical evidence relating to the MBTI, however,
Dr. Paul Kline, Professor of Psychometrics at Exeter University, commented
that "There has been no clear support for the 8-fold categorization, despite
the popularity of the MBTI."(11) Mario Bergner, a colleague of Leanne
Payne in Pastoral Care Ministries, observed in a July 2nd, 1996 letter
that "of all the different types of psychological testing, forced choice
tests (such as the MBTI) are considered the least valid." More specifically,
Bergner noted that "the validity of the MBTI is at zero because the test
is based on a Jungian understanding of the soul which cannot be measured
for good or bad." The official MBTI view, as expressed by Dr. Gordon
Lawrence, is that MBTI personality designations are "as unchangeable as
the stripes on a tiger".(12) Bergner, in contrast, does not believe
that all of humanity can be unchangeably boxed into 16 temperament types,
and is concerned about cases where people are being rejected for job applications,
because they don’t fit certain MBTI categories.

2. What is Carl Jung’s Relation to Neo-Gnosticism?Carl Jung is described by Merill Berger, a Jungian psychologist, as
"the psychologist of the 21st century".(13) Dr. Satinover says "Because
of his great influence in propagating gnostic philosophy and morals in
churches & synagogues, Jung deserves a closer look. The moral
relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an
outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor."(14)
One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism
& the New Age Movement. That is why Satinover comments that "One
of the most powerful modern forms of Gnosticism is without question Jungian
psychology, both within or without the Church".(15) Carl Jung "explicitly
identified depth psychology, especially his own, as heir to the apostolic
tradition, especially in what he considered its superior handling of the
problem of evil."(16) Jung claimed that "In the ancient world, the
Gnostics, whose arguments were very much influenced by psychic experience,
tackled the problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers."(17)
Dr. Satinover notes that "Whatever the system, and however the different
stages are purportedly marked, the ultimate aim, the innermost circle of
all Gnostic systems, is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil."(18)

Jung, says Satinover, "devoted most of his adult life to a study of
alchemy; he also explicated both antique hermeticism and the ‘christian’
gnostics; his earliest writings were about spiritualism..."(19) In
his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung claimed: "The possibility
of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain
back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology."(20) Most people
are not aware that Jung collected one of the largest amassing of spiritualistic
writings found on the European continent.(21) Dr. James Hillman, the former
director for the Jungian Institute in Zurich, commented, "(Jung) wrote
the first introduction to Zen Buddhism, he...brought in (Greek Mythology),
the gods and the goddesses, the myths,...he was interested in astrology..."(22)

In 1929, Jung wrote a commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower,
which he said was "not only a Taoist text concerned with Chinese Yoga,
but is also an alchemical treatise."(23) He comments that "...it
was the text of the Golden Flower that first put me on the right track.
For in medieval alchemy we have the long-sought connecting link between
Gnosis (i.e. of the Gnostics) and the processes of the collective unconscious
that can be observed in modern man..."(24) Dr. Richard Noll comments
that "the divinatory methods of the I Ching, used often by Jung in the
1920s and 1930s, were a part of the initial training program of the C.G.
Jung Institute of Zurich in 1948, and its use is widely advocated today
in Jungian Analytic-Training Institutes throughout the world."(25)

During the hippie movement of the 1960’s, the Rock Opera Hair boldly
proclaimed the alleged dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Once again
Carl Jung foreshadowed this emphasis in a 1940 letter to his former assistant,
Godwin Baynes: "1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first
star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age."(26)
In Jung’s book Aion, he holds that "...the appearance of Christ coincided
with the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes. A sychronicity
exists between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event,
the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces."(27) In a letter
written by Jung to Sigmund Freud, he said: "My evenings are taken up very
largely with astrology. I made horoscopic calculations in order to
find a clue to the core of psychological truth...I dare say that we shall
one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively
projected into the heavens." (28)

Jung’s family had occult linkage on both sides, from his paternal Grandfather’s
Freemasonry involvement as Grandmaster of the Swiss Lodge(29), and his
maternal family’s long-term involvement with seances and ghosts.
John Kerr, author of A Most Dangerous Method, comments that Jung was heavily
involved for many years with his mother and two female cousins in hypnotically
induced seances. Jung eventually wrote up the seances as his medical
dissertation.(30) Jung acquired a spirit guide and guru named ‘Philemon’[who
was described by Jung as ‘an old man with the horns of a bull...and the
wings of a fisher’]. Before being Philemon, this creature appeared
to Jung as ‘Elijah’, and then finally mutated to ‘Ka’, an Egyptian earth-soul
that ‘came from below’.(31) It may be worth reflecting upon why Jung
designated his Bollingen Tower as the Shrine of Philemon.(32)

Carl Jung himself was the son of a Swiss Pastor caught in an intellectual
faith crisis. When younger, he had a life-changing dream of a subterranean
phallic god which reappeared "whenever anyone spoke too emphatically about
Lord Jesus."(33) Jung commented that "...the ‘man-eater’ in general
was symbolized by the phallus, so that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit
and the phallus were identical."(34) This "initiation into the realm
of darkness"(35) radically shaped Jung’s approach to Jesus: "Lord Jesus
never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable,
for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart...Lord
Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death...Secretly, his love and
kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me..."(36)
The next major spiritual breakthrough in his life was what Jung described
as a "blasphemous vision"(37) of God dropping his dung on the local Cathedral.
This vision, said Jung, gave him an intense "experience of divine grace".(38)

3. How serious is the Jungian Reconciliation of Good
and Evil?Leanne Payne says of Dr. Jeffrey Satinover that "like (C.S.)
Lewis, he knows that we can never reconcile (synthesize) good and evil,
and this synthesis is the greatest threat facing not only Christendom but
all mankind today."(39) Dr. Satinover sees the temptation facing
our generation that"...on a theological plane, we succumb to the dangerous
fantasy that Good and Evil will be reunited in a higher oneness."(40)

One of Jung’s key emphases was that the "dark side" of human nature
needed to be "integrated" into a single, overarching "wholeness" in order
to form a less strict and difficult definition of goodness.(41) "For
Jung", says Satinover, "good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced,
cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis.
This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart
of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality,
hence morality, within man himself. Hence ‘the union of opposites’."(42)

Jung believed that "the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern
psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things..."(43)
For Jung, it was regrettable that Christ in his goodness lacked a shadow
side, and God the Father, who is the Light, lacked darkness.(44)
He spoke of "...an archetype such as...the still pending answer to
the Gnostic question as to the origin of evil, or, to put it another way,
the incompleteness of the Christian God-image"(45) Jung sought a
solution to this dilemma in the Holy Spirit who united the split in the
moral opposites symbolized by Christ and Satan.(46) "Looked at from
a quaternary standpoint", writes Jung, "the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation
of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which
Christ personifies."(47) Thus for Jung, says John Dourley, the Spirit
unites the exclusively spiritual reality of Christ with that which is identified
with the devil, including ‘the dark world of nature-bound man’, the chthonic
side of nature excluded by Christianity from the Christ image.(48)
In a similar vein, Jung saw the alchemical figure of Mercurius as a compensation
for the one-sideness of the symbol of Christ.(49) That is why Jung
believed that "It is possible for a man to attain totality, to become whole,
only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness..."(50)

4. How Much Influence does Jungian Neo-Gnosticism have on the
Church?There are key individuals promoting the Jungian gospel to the Church,
such as Morton Kelsey, John Sanford(not John & Paula Sandford), Thomas
Moore, Joseph Campbell, and Bishop John Spong. Thomas Moore, a former
Roman Catholic monk, is widely popular with a new generation of soul-seekers,
through his best-seller: Care of the Soul. John Sanford, the son
of the late Agnes Sanford, is an Episcopal Priest and Jungian analyst,
with several books promoting the Jungian way. Morton Kelsey is another
Episcopal Priest who has subtly woven the Jungian gospel through virtually
every one of his books, specially those aimed for the Charismatic renewal
constituency. Satinover describes Kelsey as having "made a career
of such compromise", noting that Kelsey has now proceeded in his
latest book Sacrament of Sexuality to approve of the normalization of homosexuality.(51)

Joseph Campbell, cited by Satinover as a disciple of Jung, is famous
for his public TV series on "The Power of Myth".(52) Bishop John
Spong, who has written two books (Resurrection: Myth or Reality & The
Easter Moment) denying the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, gives
Joseph Campbell credit for shaping his views on Jesus’ resurrection.
"I was touched by Campbell’s ability to seek the truth of myths while refusing
to literalize the rational explanation of those myths...Campbell allowed
me to appreciate such timeless themes as virgin births, incarnations, physical
resurrections, and cosmic ascensions...Slowly, ever so slowly, but equally
ever so surely, a separation began to occur for me between the experience
captured for us Christians in the word Easter and the interpretation of
that experience found in both the Christian Scriptures and the developing
Christian traditions..."(53) Few people have realized that Bishop
Spong’s spiritual grandfather is none other than Carl Jung.

"Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity - and
thus on Western culture," says Satinover, " has been incalculable.
It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream
denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines
and liturgy - have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic
theology."(54) It is not just the more ‘liberal’ groups, however,
that are embracing the Jungian/MBTI approach. In a good number of
Evangelical theological colleges, the MBTI is being imposed upon the student
body as a basic course requirement, despite the official Jungian stance
that "The client has the choice of taking the MBTI or not. Even subtle
pressure should be avoided (55)."

While in theological school, I became aware of the strong influence
of Dr. Paul Tillich on many modern clergy. In recently reading C.G.
Jung & Paul Tillich [written by John Dourley, a Jungian analyst &
Roman priest from Ottawa], I came to realize that Tillich and Jung
are ‘theological twins’. In a tribute given at a Memorial for Jung’s
death, Tillich gave to Jung’s thought the status of an ontology because
its depth and universality constituted a ‘doctrine of being’(56)
It turns out that Tillich is heavily in debt in Jung for his view of God
as the supposed "Ground of Being". As well, both Tillich and Jung,
says Dourley, "understand the self to be that centering force within the
psyche which brings together the opposites or polarities, whose dynamic
interplay makes up life itself."(57) As a Jungian popularizer, Tillich
saw life as "made up of the flow of energy between opposing poles or opposites."(58)

So many current theological emphases in today’s church can be traced
directly back to Carl Jung. For example, with the loss of confidence
in the Missionary imperative, many mainline church administrators today
sound remarkably like Jung when he said: "What we from our point of view
call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc,
has another face - the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness
for distant quarry - a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen."(59)
In speaking of Buddhism and Christianity, Jung taught the now familiar
inter-faith dialogue line, that "Both paths are right."(60) Jung
spoke of Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse as ‘pillars of the spirit’, saying
"I could give none preference over the other."(61) The English Theologian
Don Cupitt says that Jung pioneered the multi-faith approach now widespread
in the Church.(62)

For those of us who wonder why some Anglicans are mistakenly calling
themselves "co-creators with God", the theological roots can again
be traced back to Jung: "...man is indispensable for the completion of
creation; that, in fact, he himself is the 2nd creator of the world, who
alone has given to the world its objective existence..."(63) In light
of our current Canadian controversies around "Mother Goddess" hymnbooks,
it is interesting to read in the MBTI source book, Psychological Types(
Carl Jung, 1921) about the "Gnostic prototype, viz, Sophia, an immensely
significant symbol for the Gnosis."(64) Carl Jung is indeed the Grandfather
of much of our current theology.

5. What is the connection between ‘Archetypes’, the Unconscious
and the MBTI?Keirsey and Bates are strong MBTI supporters who have identified the
link between the MBTI psychological types and Jungian archetypes.
In their book Please Understand Me, they state Jung’s belief that "..all
have the same multitude of instincts (i.e. archetypes) to drive them from
within." Jung therefore "invented the ‘function types’ or ‘psychological
types’" to combine the uniformity of the archetypes with the diversity
of human functioning.(65) In their best-selling MBTI book: Gifts
Differing, Isabel Myers Briggs and Peter B. Myers speak openly about Jungian
Archetypes as "those symbols, myths, and concepts that appear to be inborn
and shared by members of a civilization".(66)

Dr. Richard Noll holds in his book The Jung Cult that such Jungian ideas
as the "collective unconscious" and the theory of the archetypes come as
much from late 19th century occultism, neopaganism, and social Darwinian
teaching, as they do from natural science.(67) Jung’s post-Freudian
work (after 1912), especially his theories of the collective unconscious
and the archetypes, could not have been constructed, says Noll, without
the works of G.R.S. Mead on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and the Mithraic Liturgy.
Starting in 1911, Jung quoted Mead, a practicing Theosophist, regularly
in his works through his entire life.(68) Richard Webster holds that
"the Unconscious is not simply an occult entity for whose real existence
there is no palpable evidence. It is an illusion produced by language
- a kind of intellectual hallucination."(69)

Jung was a master at creating obscure, scientific-sounding concepts,
usually adapted from occultic literature. Jung held that "the collective
unconsciousness is the sediment of all the experience of the universe of
all time, and is also the image of the universe that has been in process
of formation from untold ages. In the course of time, certain features
became prominent in this image, the so-called dominants (later called archetypes
by Jung)."(70) [Much of Jung’s teaching on archetypes is so obscure
that I have placed the relevant data in the footnotes of this report, for
the more motivated reader.]

In his phylogenetic racial theory, Jung assumes that acquired cultural
attitudes, and hence Jungian archetypes, can actually be transmitted by
genetic inheritance. Richard Webster, however, explodes Jung’s phylogenetic
theory as biologically untenable.(71) Peter B. Medawar, a distinguished
biologist, wrote in the New York Review of Books (Jan. 23, 1975): "The
opinion is gaining ground that doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory is the
most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the 20th century: and
a terminal product as well - something akin to a dinosaur or zeppelin in
the history of ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and
with no posterity."

"This work Psychological Types (1921), said Jung, "sprung originally
from my need to define the way in which my outlook differs from Freud’s
and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across
the problem of types, for it is one’s psychological type which from the
outset determines and limits a person’s judgment."(72) In words strangely
reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Jung teaches in Psychological
Types (PT) that "The unconscious, regarded as the historical background
of the psyche, contains in a concentrated form the entire succession of
engrams (imprints), which from time to time have determined the psychic
structure as it now exists."(73)

Jung held in PT that "The magician...has access to the unconscious that
is still pagan, where the opposites still lie together in their primeval
naiveté, beyond the reach of ‘sinfulness’, but liable, when accepted
into conscious life, to beget evil as well as good with the same primeval
and therefore daemonic force."(74) Jung entitled an entire section
in PT: "Concerning the Brahmanic Conception of the Reconciling Symbol".
Jung notes: "Brahman therefore must signify the irrational union of the
opposites - hence their final overcoming...These quotations show that Brahman
is the reconciliation and dissolution of the opposites - hence standing
beyond them as an irrational factor."(75)

My recurring question is: "Do we in ARM Canada wish to be
directly or indirectly sanctioning this kind of teaching?" Symbolically,
the MBTI can be thought of as a "freeze-dried" version of Jung’s
Psychological Types (1921). Since PT teaches extensively about Jung’s archetypes
and collective unconscious, it seems clear to me that to endorse the ‘freeze-dried’
MBTI is ultimately to endorse Jung’s archetypal, occultic philosophy.

6. What is the Relationship between Neo-gnosticism and the
MBTI?Dr. Richard Noll of Harvard University comments that "We know that
(Wilhelm) Ostwald was a significant influence on Jung in the formation
of his theory of psychological types."(76) Jung mentioned Ostwald’s
division of men of genius into classics and romantics in his first public
presentation on psychological types at the Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich
in September 1913. The classics and the romantics corresponded, according
to Jung, to the introverted type and the extraverted type. Long quotations
from Ostwald appear in other of Jung’s work between 1913 and 1921 - precisely
the period of Ostwald’s most outspoken advocacy of eugenics, nature worship,
and German imperialism through the Monistenbund, a Monistic Alliance led
by Ostwald. An entire chapter of Jung’s Psychological Types is devoted
favorably to these same ideas of Ostwald."(77) Is any link, however,
between Ostwald’s Germanic anti-Semitism and Jung merely an exercise in
‘guilt-by-association’? The newly emerging hard data would suggest
otherwise. The influence of Germanic anti-Semitism on Jungianism
can now be seen in a secret quota clause designed to limit Jewish membership
to 10% in the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich. Jung’s secret
Jewish quota was in effect from 1916 to 1950, and only came to public light
in 1989.(78)

"The book on types (PT)", says Jung, "yielded the view that every judgment
made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every
point of view is necessarily relative. This raised the question of
the unity which much compensate this diversity, and it led me directly
to the Chinese concept of Tao."(79) Put simply, the MBTI conceptually
leads to Taoism. Jung held that the central concept of his psychology
was "the process of individuation". Interesting the subtitle of the
PT book, which The MBTI claims to represent, is "...or The Psychology of
Individuation". Philip Davis, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
at the University of P.E.I. comments, "In this lengthy process of ‘individuation’,
one learns that one’s personality incorporates a series of polar opposites:
rationality and irrationality, the ‘animal’ and the ‘spiritual’, ‘masculinity’
and ‘femininity’, and so on. The goal of the (Jungian) exercise is
the reconciliation of the opposites, bringing them all into a harmony that
results in ‘self-actualization’." (80) Once again, it seems that
aspect after aspect of this seemingly innocuous personality test leads
back to Jung’s fundamental philosophic and religious teachings.

Two of Jung’s ‘most influential archetypes’ are the anima & animus,
described by Jung as "psychological bisexuality".(81) Jung teaches
in PT that every man has a female soul (anima) and every woman has a male
soul (animus).(82) Noll comments that "Jung’s first encounter with
the feminine entity he later called the anima seems to have begun with
his use of mediumistic techniques..."(83) Based on the recently discovered
personal diary of Sabina Spielrein, John Kerr claims that Jung’s so-called
anima "the woman within" which he spoke to, was none other than his idealized
image of his former mistress, patient, and fellow therapist, Sabina Spielrein.(84)
After breaking with both Spielrein and Freud, Jung felt his own soul
vanish as if it had flown away to the land of the dead. Shortly after,
while his children were plagued by nightmares and the house was seemingly
haunted, Jung heard a chorus of spirits cry out demanding: ‘We have
come back from Jerusalem where we have not found what we sought.’(85)

In response to these spirits, Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead.
In these seven messages Jung ‘reveals’, in agreement with the 2nd century
Gnostic writer Basilides, the True and Ultimate God as Abraxas, who
combines Jesus and Satan, good and evil all in one.(86) This is why
Jung held that "Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator."(87)
Dr. Noll, a clinical psychologist and post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University,
holds that "Jung was waging war against Christianity and its distant, absolute,
unreachable God and was training his disciples to listen to the voice of
the dead and to become gods themselves."(88)

7. What Does the MBTI Prototype Book "Psychological Types"
teach about Opposites?Consistently Jung teaches about reconciliation of opposites, even of
good and evil. Jung comments in MDR : "...a large part of my life
work has revolved around the problem of opposites and especially their
alchemical symbolism..."(89) Through experiencing Goethe’s Faust,
Jung came to believe in the ‘universal power’ of evil and "its mysterious
role it played in delivering man from darkness and suffering."(90)
"Most of all", said Jung, "(Faust) awakened in me the problem of opposites,
of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness."(91)
Being influenced as well by the Yin-Yang of Taoism, Jung believed that
"Everything requires for its existence its opposite, or it fades into nothingness."(92)

Dr. Gordon Lawrence, a strong Jungian/MBTI supporter, teaches that "In
Jung’s theory, the two kinds of perception - sensing and intuition - are
polar opposites of each other. Similarly, thinking judgment and feeling
judgment are polar opposites."(93) It seems to me that the setting
up of the psychological polar opposites in PT functions as a useful prelude
for gnostic reconciliation of all opposites. The MBTI helps condition
our minds into thinking about the existence of polar opposites, and their
alleged barriers to perfect wholeness. In the PT book, Jung comments
that "One may be sure therefore, that, interwoven in the new symbol with
its living beauty, there is also the element of evil, for, if not, it would
lack the glow of life as well as beauty, since life and beauty are naturally
indifferent to morality."(94) My question for the ARM Board is: "Do
we accept Jung’s ‘polar opposites’ view that there can be no life and beauty
without evil?"

"We must beware", said Jung, "of thinking of good and evil as absolute
opposites...The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the
simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while
so -called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality
of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting
both into halves of a paradoxical whole."(95) Here is where Jung
ties in his ethical relativism to the PT/MBTI worldview: "In practical
terms, this means that good and evil are no longer so self-evident.
We have to realize that each represents a judgment."(96)

Jung saw the reconciliation of opposites as a sign of great sophistication:
"(Chinese philosophy) never failed to acknowledge the polarity and paradoxity
of all life. The opposites always balanced one another - a sign of
high culture. Onesideness, though it lends momentum, is a sign of
barbarism."(97) It would not be too far off to describe Jung as a
gnostic Taoist. In PT, Jung comments that "The Indian (Brahman-Atman
teaching) conception teaches liberation from the opposites, by which every
sort of affective style and emotional hold to the object is understood...Yoga
is a method by which the libido is systematically ‘drawn in’ and thereby
released from the bondage of opposites."(98)

While in India in 1938, Jung says that he "was principally concerned
with the question of the psychological nature of evil."(99) He was "impressed
again and again by the fact that these people were able to integrate so-called
‘evil’ without ‘losing face’...To the oriental, good and evil are meaningfully
contained in nature, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing.
I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good...one
does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good."(100)

In a comment reminiscent of our 1990’s relativistic culture, Jung said
of Hindu thought: " Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or
my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil".(101) To accept the
eight polarities within the MBTI predisposes one to embrace Jung’s teaching
that the psyche "cannot set up any absolute truths, for its own polarity
determines the relativity of its statements."(102) Jung was also
a strong promoter of the occultic mandala, a circular picture with a sun
or star usually at the centre. Sun worship, as personified in the mandala,
is perhaps the key to fully understanding Jung.(103) Jung taught
that the mandala [Sanskrit for ‘circle’] was "the simplest model of a concept
of wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a representation
of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites."(104)

In conclusion, to endorse the MBTI is to endorse Jung’s book Psychological
Types, since the MBTI proponents consistently say that the MBTI "was developed
specifically to carry Carl Jung’s theory of types (1921, 1971) into practical
application."(105) Let us seek the Lord in unity as he reveals his
heart for us in this matter.

Rev. Ed Hird, Past National Chair, ARM Canada

p.s. ARM Canada decided in November 1997 after much prayer and reflection
to no longer use the MBTI in the Clergy and Lay Leadership Training Institutes.
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